Women's History Month - A Personal Legacy
“Now we have a female vice president, we can enjoy professional women’s basketball games, and more women hold public office than ever before. ”
I was raised to be a little lady, sitting with the skirt of my dress draped over my knees, one hand folded over the other in my lap, my ankles crossed and feet dangling. A little lady does not speak until spoken to, does not look adults directly in the eye, and never, ever offers an opinion or fact into the conversation. I couldn’t even wear a comfortable pair of trousers until I was five years old. Even as a young child, these social conventions strained at my very being. What I didn’t realize at the time was that being who I truly am, while trying to exist within these restrictions is a paradox I was too young to solve. Yet I, as most women do, have a hidden legacy to draw upon going back generations when called upon to come to terms with this age-old dilemma.
Sarah Susan, my great-great-grandmother, educated and the daughter of a doctor, married a handsome, charming ne’er-do-well after the Civil War. He had the same wanderlust my father would later exhibit, but in his case, it was not an annual affair.
After a disastrous move to the wilds of Minnesota, he headed back to the family home in the more civilized portion of the state to earn some cash for Sarah Susan to follow, moving their household and the six children. When he finally sent some money on, the family started out with a wagon full of goods, two oxen, and ten dollars for the journey. Halfway into their trek, she traded the oxen for horses with two men headed out west. The trouble was, Sarah Susan had never worked with horses and did not know how to harness them. Luckily, there was a farmhouse nearby, the farmer was out in his field, she walked over, talked him into teaching her the ins and outs of harnessing horses and they were on their way.
The final trip spelled disaster for most of the family. From the information on a flyer passed around by the railroads, Sarah Susan’s husband convinced what was left of the extended family to move to Montana. This bountiful land with a mighty river as a source of water turned out to be the eastern plains. They couldn’t farm because their seed wouldn’t grow on prairie land, they had to either haul their own water or buy it. It was this water that caused the death of Sarah Susan at the age of 33 of typhoid fever.
Sarah Susan’s daughter Alice, the sixth of her nine children, was my great gran, who was farmed out at six after her mother’s death, married at eighteen to an acute asthmatic who could not work, spent her life raising thirteen children of her own, not counting that husband, ending up bedridden at eighty. Though she was worn out, she still had the grace and patience for my 5-year-old constant questioning of “What was it like when you were a little girl? Did you really have to wear those long dresses all the time?” I suspect she was the reason I got my first pair of trousers.
Her daughters, Pearl and Flo (my grandmother) directed Sunday School of the Air on Radio and TV in Spokane, Washington. It was always described like that as “on Radio and TV.” In those days, not many women took the directorial role, but you know it was a Sunday School show it couldn’t cause too much harm. After Pearl’s stroke, it was my grandmother’s show. With no real stretch of the imagination, I could see this bustling, officious little lady bossing people around on the set. It was just the Radio and TV part that was a little surreal.
My father, Flo’s youngest son, was in and out of our lives, a genetic holdover from that earlier ne’er-do-well I suppose. With four children at home, one daughter already married, my mother often worked two jobs to keep our heads above water. One day, when she finally got tired of the disdainful treatment she received from a mechanic as she dropped off her car at a shop, she decided to learn how to work on her own car, which she did. I still see her, car hood up, bending over the engine, ratchet wrench in hand posed to tighten a bolt. Branching out to appliance repair was somewhat less successful. The washing machine always worked after her careful ministrations, but the house was littered with all those pesky leftover springs and little wheels the manufacturers included just to vex her.
And high school me stuck in a PE half-court basketball game with that stupid three-step rule, yearning for the other half of the court. Wanting to break free, barrel down to that other goal into a perfect, gorgeously fluid lay-up, the ball squishing through the net.
It was a long time before I saw the common thread running through these narratives. Meeting a challenge with a drawn-in of breath “okay, let’s do this” attitude, going beyond what simply must be done, learning from the times when I could not muster the courage or face the derision or was too tired to yet again rise to the “girls don’t do that” taunt.
The first time I noticed a significant change was when my two-year-old grandniece plopped herself down next to me on the couch and smiled up at me and said “hi”. Comfortable, confident of welcome, totally contained within herself. I asked myself, “When did this happen to little girls? How could I have missed this?”
Now we have a female vice president, we can enjoy professional women’s basketball games, and more women hold public office than ever before. Yet there is still pushback, a “girls to the end of the line” mentality trying to keep us in our places. Then I remember that long line of grandmothers, meeting those daily challenges, exceeding expectations in their ordinary, day-to-day revolutions. Remembering those journeys from our legacies, we must continue to push forward against barriers and doors blocking our way until we see an opening, light breaking through fissures in the walls and ceilings that confine us. The pressure of those legacies, the history of our ancestors lending support can guide us. Together, we can move step by step shedding societal labels until we stand individually and collectively blending our voices into a glorious declaration of personhood.
-Rhonda Allison, Yellow Wood Academy Teacher